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Do you think Benghazi could develop into a scandal on par with Watergate? If not involving the President himself, then perhaps involving people very close to him--At the very least, severely embarrassing him or worse crippling his Presidency; At worst, reaching the Presidential level and launching a perhaps prolonged affair like Watergate was?

Pretty much what Rock said. Well, that, and I don't think that there's the potential for a threat of impeachment here, so the two aren't really on the same par. In Watergate, there was a clear, unmistakable impeachable offense: conspiracy to commit a pissant burglary. With Benghazi, there is no high crime or misdemeanor, unfortunately. It is the President's prerogative to knowingly just leave people in foreign lands to get massacred. It's politically bad, but it's not illegal. It is the President's prerogative to lie to the American people. Again, it's politically bad, but it's not illegal. Clinton was not impeached because he went on TV and shook his finger at the nation; he was impeached because he lied in grand jury testimony, which is perjury, which one may or may not agree is a "high crime or misdemeanor," but the House certainly felt that it was, and the courts thought enough of it to strip him of his law license.

Unfortunately, thanks to the election, there is probably nothing that can really be done about Benghazi other than to further strip Obama of any credibility whatsoever and politically hobble the remainder of his Presidency. But, since apparently a majority of the American people care more about getting their free shit from the government than they do the integrity of that same government, there probably is no hobbling of his Presidency, either. With all of the bald-faced lies he has told the American people well before the election, with the economy in the shitter and not coming back in the next four years at the very earliest, with gas at $3 a gallon and more, with stagflation that was actually intentionally brought on by this White House, no one in the Obama cult seems to be interested in being dissuaded from worshiping him at all costs. The media don't give a shit, the people don't give a shit, the people don't give a shit that the media doesn't give a shit, so apparently this is just going to be one of those episodes that the history books will remark was a "troubled time for the nation" or some such, and since the textbooks are all written by liberal ideologues now instead of historians, they'll probably just blame it all on racism, George Bush, and Mitt Romney.

No, if for no other reason than that the truth about the attacks was out within 2 weeks. The administration's biggest mistake was trying to address it before the investigation was complete. They should have done like Rumsfeld after 9-11, and told the public that until we have all the intelligence sorted out, we can't give definite answers about anything, instead of going with the movie thing, which was the motivation behind other protests at other US Embassies in the Middle East at the same time.

Watergate went on for a while before the truth finally came out, with lots of dodging and covering up by a good number of Nixon's cabinet.

What I don't get is how people can find so much fault with Obama over this, and yet don't consider the Iran Contra scandal to be that big of a deal. The Reagan administration wanted to take out a legally elected, yet communist leader of Nicaragua, but Congress refused to fund them because the same people (the Contras) that the administation wanted to fund were also drug dealers and were responsible for slaughtering civilians. So, in order to bypass Congress, the Reagan administration sold weapons to Iran (who had recently released our hostages, allegedly because they were afraid of Reagan) and gave the profits to the Contras.

Reagan didn't resign, wasn't impeached after the congressional hearings. He claimed in his testimony before Congress that he "forgot" about the conversations he had with his cabinet officials regarding the program. I didn't believe him at the time, but then he got diagnosed with Alzheimer's, so maybe he did forget. Although that means he had Alzheimer's during his presidency.

This situation is actually more akin in some ways to the attack on the Marines in Beiruit in the 80s, except that the Obama adminstration wasn't actually arming the country who armed the terrorists who attacked those Marines.

There is another issue to this, one that is a major conflict between conservatives and liberals, dems/repubs regarding how to deal with terrorism. Conservatives consider terrorist attacks to be acts of war, and the response should be war. Liberals consider terrorist attacks to be crimes, and want those who commit them to be punished as criminals. Conservatives think that's weak.

No, if for no other reason than that the truth about the attacks was out within 2 weeks. The administration's biggest mistake was trying to address it before the investigation was complete. They should have done like Rumsfeld after 9-11, and told the public that until we have all the intelligence sorted out, we can't give definite answers about anything, instead of going with the movie thing, which was the motivation behind other protests at other US Embassies in the Middle East at the same time.

Watergate went on for a while before the truth finally came out, with lots of dodging and covering up by a good number of Nixon's cabinet.

What I don't get is how people can find so much fault with Obama over this, and yet don't consider the Iran Contra scandal to be that big of a deal. The Reagan administration wanted to take out a legally elected, yet communist leader of Nicaragua, but Congress refused to fund them because the same people (the Contras) that the administation wanted to fund were also drug dealers and were responsible for slaughtering civilians. So, in order to bypass Congress, the Reagan administration sold weapons to Iran (who had recently released our hostages, allegedly because they were afraid of Reagan) and gave the profits to the Contras.

Reagan didn't resign, wasn't impeached after the congressional hearings. He claimed in his testimony before Congress that he "forgot" about the conversations he had with his cabinet officials regarding the program. I didn't believe him at the time, but then he got diagnosed with Alzheimer's, so maybe he did forget. Although that means he had Alzheimer's during his presidency.

This situation is actually more akin in some ways to the attack on the Marines in Beiruit in the 80s, except that the Obama adminstration wasn't actually arming the country who armed the terrorists who attacked those Marines.

There is another issue to this, one that is a major conflict between conservatives and liberals, dems/repubs regarding how to deal with terrorism. Conservatives consider terrorist attacks to be acts of war, and the response should be war. Liberals consider terrorist attacks to be crimes, and want those who commit them to be punished as criminals. Conservatives think that's weak.

Have to disagree with your very first point, here. The administration's biggest mistake was the firm insertion of their thumbs into their rectums, while watching four Americans get murdered on live video feed from a drone.

And as far as Obama's culpability? He said himself that "the buck stops here."

So, when the CIA annex responded, and were ordered to stand down, he ordered it.

When Special Operators at Sigonella (1 hour away from Tripoli; the firefight was 7 hrs) were not scrambled, he failed to act.

When the state department offered patently false explanations to the American public, Obama lied.